20131030

PJ Media co-founder, Roger Simon, discusses how the Obamacare problems are awakening Left and Centrist supporters of Obama Administration's governance.

Mr. Simon discusses how to bridge discussion and foster progress among people with divergent political perceptions. Questions and Answers at 27:52 mark. Recorded before the Hancock Park Patriots meeting at Busby's East, Los Angeles, Calif., Oct 27, 2013.

20131026

The Los Angeles Jazz Institute houses and maintains one of the largest jazz archives in the world. All styles and eras are represented with a special emphasis on the preservation and documentation of jazz in Southern California. The overall mission of the Jazz Institute is to preserve, promote and perpetuate the heritage of this important American art form. Autumn Festival: Oct 24-27, 2013 at L.A.X. Marriott Hotel.

Text review of Oct 2011 Festival by Jeff Krow in Audiophile Audition; Video by Scott Jenkins.Los Angeles Jazz Institute (as part of its bi-annual, 4-day, Jazz festival entitled Modern Sounds: Celebrating the West Coast Sound at Los Angeles Airport Marriott) festival director, Ken Poston, decided this festival’s focus was to be the music and arrangements of West Coast (1950s) jazz masters.“Modern Sounds” featured more concerts over the weekend than on any prior festival. The bands were led by band leaders who largely reside in the greater Los Angeles area. The festival’s premier band leaders – Gerald Wilson, Bill Holman, Terry Gibbs, Johnny Mandel, and Lanny Morgan have made Los Angeles their home base for years. Their band members, as pointed out in this review, are the cream of the crop of local talent, who make their living in LA.

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Watch clips from the performances and Scott Jenkins' interviews with the artists and curators there.“Modern Sounds” featured more concerts over the weekend than on any prior festival. The bands were led by band leaders who largely reside in the greater Los Angeles area. The festival’s premier band leaders – Gerald Wilson, Bill Holman, Terry Gibbs, Johnny Mandel, and Lanny Morgan have made Los Angeles their home base for years. Their band members, as pointed out in this review, are the cream of the crop of local talent, who make their living in LA.Along with panel discussions and rare films offered during the day (and a daily lunch concert by the pool), the evening’s theme concerts were dedicated to Shorty Rogers on Thursday night; Gerry Mulligan on Friday night; Jazz Goes to Hollywood (West Coast jazz used for film scores in the 1950s) on Saturday night; and an evening with jazz masters Bill Holman and Gerald Wilson’s big bands on Sunday night.Sunday afternoon and evening memories were made by a panel with 93 year old legend Gerald Wilson; followed by David Paich, from Toto fame, leading his father Marty’s arrangements from I Get a Boot Out of You. An added touch was provided Mel Torme’s son, Jamie, vocalizing on three tunes at the end of the set. From father to son…Sunday night brought an Evening with the Masters: Bill Holman and Gerald Wilson’s Big Bands. Holman’s set had arrangements of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” as well as Holman staples, “Sweet Spot,” “Just Friends,” and “Bari Me Not,” a feature for Bob Efford, on the big horn.Wilson’s big band brought rousing versions of “Blues for the Count” (Basie), bluesy renditions showing Gerald’s fascination with Stravinsky, and Debussy, with familiar melodies blending with big band blow-out power. Gerald showed off family members, son, guitarist, Anthony, and grandson, Eric Otis, who led the band in his own new composition (from Gerald’s latest CD), “September Sky” that was simply sublime.The Los Angeles Jazz Institute’s weekend festivals are unique in that they celebrate the heyday of West Coast jazz, that being largely the decade of the 1950s into the early ’60s, when many East Coast bands and individuals came out to Los Angeles to experience the balmy LA weather and the cool relaxed scene. Many stayed for the film, TV, and commercial work that they found in Southern California. Howard Rumsey’s Jazz Lighthouse All-Stars found an adoring following, and its members, including Art Pepper, Bob Cooper, Bud Shank, Bill Perkins, and many others made the cool yet swinging sound the trademark of West Coast jazz. Most present day attendees of Poston directed weekend festivals were either residents of LA or long time devotees of the sound that emanated from LA area. They return each year from all over the country and across the pond from England and Europe.

20131015

"Yasser Arafat could not have been poisoned by polonium," Russian medical agency chief leaks, Russian biologist exposes exhumed Arafat polonium as planted post-humously for political benefit - invalidating new report of polonium on PLO-leader's remains as causing death in 2004.

In November, 2012, JewTube.Info reported that Dr. Roland Masse, radiopathologist at Paris' Percy hospital which treated the dying Palestinian leader in 2004, had decried the exhumation of Yasser Arafat to test for poloium poisoning. He declared that "the symptoms of polonium poisoning would have been “impossible to miss,” noting that Percy had tested Arafat for radiation poisoning, and revealed that the hospital specializes in the related field of radiation detection. “A lethal level of polonium simply cannot go unnoticed,” he said, speaking as workers in Ramallah on Tuesday began the process of preparing Arafat’s grave for exhumation.

Earlier today Russian News service Interfax earlier quoted FMBA (Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency) head Vladimir Uiba as saying he did not believe the report published in British Medical Journal, The Lancet over the weekend saying that Swiss radiation experts had found traces of polonium on Arafat's clothing.

"He could not have been poisoned by polonium," Uiba told the Russian news agency. "The Russian experts who conducted the investigation did not find traces of this substance."

Even without the FMBA, the fact is The Lancet's report of polonium on Arafat’s “tighty whiteys” is an elaborate hoax. Polonium has a half-life of 138 days, which means every four-and-a-half months (give or take a day or two) only half of the radioactive substance would remain. The amount suppossedly found on Arafat’s gown and boxers, eight years after his death translates to levels that would have also infected his doctors and wife during his last days. In other words, the polonium was added more recently than eight years ago.As Yaakov Lappin reported in this July 2012 article in The Jerusalem Post: 'Polonium found on Arafat's clothing was planted'

Israel is conducting a diplomatic campaign aimed at blunting the success of the so-called charm offensive led by Iranian President Hassan Rohani during his visit to the United Nations last month. After the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aggressive speeches, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who is now in the United States, is focused on persuading the Americans not to allow any relaxation of the sanctions on Iran before Tehran signs a binding agreement that will slam the brakes on its nuclear program. In the background, Israel is canvassing Congress with a more ambitious goal in mind – intensifying the sanctions, a move that could lead to a confrontation with the Obama administration, which opposes doing so at this stage. . . .

Jerusalem now realizes, perhaps more than at earlier stages, the full ramifications of conducting an independent military strike on Iran against the will of the United States. A former senior defense official, who played a major role in recent years in the relations between the two countries, told Haaretz this week that an Israeli strike after an agreement is reached between Iran and the world powers and against the latter’s will, on grounds that the compromise reached was insufficient, could be likened to “an act of strategic suicide.”

In a series of press interviews, Netanyahu urges European countries to stop Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb while it’s still possible; insists Israel is not isolated.

On Thursday, Netanyahu gave interviews to several leading media outlets in the three European powers participating in the talks – France, Britain and Germany. The other members of the P5+1 are the United States, Russia and China. In Britain, he spoke to the Financial Times and the Sky television network, in France to Le Monde and the France 24 network, and in Germany to Frankfurter Allgemeine and the ARD network.

A press statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office said that in these interviews, Netanyahu urged European countries to stop Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb while it’s still possible.

“But if the sanctions are eased, the sanctions will collapse. They’ll get everything they want, and we, collectively, won’t get anything. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The Jewish people has been around for 4,000 years. They tried to destroy us over and over, but they didn’t succeed, and we also won’t let people like the ayatollahs succeed. It’s important to stress that this isn’t just an Israeli issue; this issue also affects you.”

In an exclusive interview with France 24, Netanyahu urged France to take a tough stance on Iran and look past Prime Minister Hassan Rohani’s “smile campaign.”

“I don’t have any problem telling the truth even if it’s not popular. It so happens that I’m not isolated - Israel is not isolated,” Netanyahu said.

“Just about every country in the Arab world agrees with our position; some say so openly, some say that less openly. There’s one country who doesn’t agree with us: Syria’s Assad, of course, because he supports Iran’s regime that continues to help him in the mass murder of women and children.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly warned world leaders not to be taken in by Iran's beneficent overtures in an address to the United Nations Tuesday. His bellicose speech stood in sharp contrast to a week of conciliatory words and optimism about US-Iranian rapprochement, and has weighed on US efforts to sustain the sense of hope that pervaded the UN last week.

Mr. Netanyahu gave his now-familiar refrain that the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, is a "wolf in sheep's clothing," warned that the US is at risk of being duped by the new leadership's moderate facade, urged that sanctions not be eased, and said Israel was not convinced by the new leadership's assertion that it was not pursuing nuclear weapons, the Journal reports.

"I want there to be no confusion on this point. Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said in the address. "If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone."

20131001

Netanyahu tells U.N. General Assembly, "He (Iranian President Rouhani) fooled the world once. Now he thinks he can fool it again. You see, Rouhani thinks he can have his yellowcake and eat it too! . . . But I will never compromise on the security of my people and of my country of the one and only Jewish state."Remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu During General Debate of the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, October 1, 2013"I feel deeply honored and privileged to stand here before you today representing the citizens of the State of Israel.We are an ancient people. We date back nearly 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We have journeyed through time, we've overcome the greatest of adversities, And we reestablished our sovereign state in our ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.The Jewish people's odyssey through time has taught us two things: Never give up hope. Always remain vigilant. Hope charts the future. Vigilance protects it.

Today, our hope for the future is challenged by a nuclear-armed Iran that seeks our destruction. But I want you to know: that wasn't always the case. Some 2500 years ago, the great Persian King Cyrus ended the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people. He issued a famous edict in which he proclaimed the right of the Jews to return to the Land of Israel and rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. That's a Persian decree, and thus began an historic friendship between the Jews and the Persians that lasted until modern times. But in 1979, a radical regime in Tehran tried to stamp out that friendship. As it was busy crushing the Iranian people's hopes for democracy, it also led wild chants of "Death to the Jews!" Now, since that time, Presidents of Iran have come and gone. Some presidents were considered moderates, others hardliners. But they've all served that same unforgiving creed, that same unforgetting regime – that creed that is espoused and enforced by the real power in Iran, the dictator known in Iran as the Supreme Leader, first Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khamenei. President Rouhani, like the presidents who came before him is a loyal servant of the regime. He was one of only six candidates the regime permitted to run for office. Nearly 700 other candidates were rejected. So what made him acceptable?